A Few Words From Debbie

Placemaking in Bloom!

Spring is in the air, and I am excited to say that planning is in full bloom for the Creative Placemaking Summit that will be taking place on October 11, 2017 at the Lansing Center. It takes a full year of brainstorming and conversation by our steering committee of 40 movers and shakers to make this event a reality. 

They are in the process of finalizing our day-long agenda, and we are in the last stages of contracting with our inspiring keynote speaker, who is sure to motivate! I won’t share who we are bringing in yet, you’ll have to wait for the official announcement (a few weeks away), but we hope to see you all in attendance. Mark your calendars now–it’s going to be a great day.

As we finished evaluating the success of last October’s Creative Placemaking Summit and began making plans for this year’s, we were given the opportunity by the Greater Lansing Regional Prosperity Initiative–our title and visionary Summit sponsor–to continue working this summer in three of our local communities. 

Through conversation and identification of readiness, our team will be working with Placemaking committees in Mason, St. Johns and Grand Ledge. We have agreed to facilitate local conversations and consult with these communities about placemaking and project identification, and we are eager to begin this work.

Our goal is to create a strong cohesive group of passionate folks to carry out projects in their community, and hopefully, along the way we will identify what community problems/challenges they are trying to solve, how success is measured, who benefits, and short-term actions that will produce long-term impacts through creative placemaking initiatives. We might even be able to identify a few resources along the way to help make some of these projects come to fruition.

Stay tuned for more Creative Placemaking Summit 3 details and how you can participate. I’m looking forward to seeing you and seeing more placemaking activities roll out this summer.

Deborah E. Mikula

Executive Director